


Dandelion Clocks

by CobaltCephalopod



Category: The Witcher (TV), Wiedźmin | The Witcher - All Media Types
Genre: Acts of Kindness, Gen, M/M, Soft Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia, Soft Jaskier | Dandelion
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-21
Updated: 2020-04-12
Packaged: 2021-02-27 10:55:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,171
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22342165
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CobaltCephalopod/pseuds/CobaltCephalopod
Summary: The little things Jaskier learns about Geralt and what Geralt notices about Jaskier over the years. Starting with the veracity in his claim to have "bread in his pants" at their first meeting.
Relationships: Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia/Jaskier | Dandelion
Comments: 18
Kudos: 526





	1. Chapter 1

Geralt knows that Jaskier had introduced himself as a ‘man with bread in his pants’ but after experiencing his characteristic chatter, he’d immediately assumed it was a metaphor for something else entirely, probably lewd or perhaps just plain inane. At the time he’d been making far more of an effort to not pay attention to any of the other patrons in the inn, including the bard, be it the booing from the other end or the whispers that swarmed at his sight, and so it comes as a surprise when he finds Jaskier was being completely forthright. 

Months later, after a feast he’d begrudgingly attended for reasons he’d rather forget, he’d been on his way out of the hall as the more drunken noble guests became rowdier than a saloon with free ale. Shoving his way free of the stragglers, he’d caught sight of an as-yet still buttoned and far too brightly colored set of clothes ducking down to table level, only to rise with an odd bulge added to the front as if its wearer had gained an extra roll of fat in the span of seconds. 

“Jaskier,” he growls once he’s closer, interrupting the bard’s attempts at stuffing another piece of loaf of bread down his sleeve that would undoubtedly have made them as thick as Geralt’s, if not more prone to crumbs. 

“Ah, Geralt! Off to recuperate after a strenuous evening of people smiling at you and badgering you with unwanted gratitude? I’m about sung out myself, always a bit more stored in there of course, for a last serenade or two for a bedfellow, but I’m—”

“What else are you storing?” Geralt pokes the offending section of Jaskier’s chest, his finger sinking into the fabric as what was underneath gave under the pressure. But instead of the sheepish hiding that he’d thought the accusation would bring out, Jaskier splutters and fumes like a barely boiling pot of water. Holding his head high as if it wasn’t Geralt who had jabbed him but rather one of the nobles accusing him of sleeping with their various innocent relatives, he backs into the table so suddenly his lute twangs. 

“Oi, that’s my breakfast in four days! Don’t need you squashing it before its time.” 

“It’s already squashed,” Geralt mutters, which only brought even more affront into Jaskier’s face. 

“I’ll have you know, this is the finest sweetbread you could find this side of Toussaint.” 

“And this side of your pants.” It was a habit he wouldn’t have thought to pin on the man who stuck out in a village like a peacock among partridges, but more likely he was just so attached to the finer foods in life that he’d stock up however he could. Besides, the cooks in the castle won’t miss the few loaves that fit up Jaskier’s trousers and he can’t fault the man for taking advantage of the situation, albeit in an unconventional way. 

But it continues. 

“You stepped on that one,” he notes, once Jaskier has plopped onto the bench beside him, their shoulders bumping together as he takes a swig from his tankard. The inn is as filthy as they came, the patrons even filthier, and yet Jaskier stuck to stuffing what had to be at least half a loaf of bread into his pockets. 

“And? This town might not appreciate the delicate nuance of my songs and tales, honestly that lady in the corner near took my eye out with her aim, but that doesn’t keep them from feeding us, one way or another. Roach would say not to look a fellow horse in the mouth.” He tears a bite off the one he still held in his hand and leans back with a sigh. 

“Even she wouldn’t eat some of this.” Geralt has to wonder if this was what Jaskier had grown used to from before they’d met. Despite his rancor at the earworm of a song that the bard had created, even he would have to be dull as a bogweed to not notice the decline in curses, glares, and general spitting that greets him in a new town and how much of that might be owed to the one currently filling his pockets with crumbs. And yet with fortune smiling on them more often, it hadn’t lessened this odd habit of frugality at all. 

“I don’t say anything about your morning talks with her, when you think I can’t hear you even though you discuss more with your horse than with me. Nor about how you have an apparent allergy to smiling.” 

This close, with Jaskier pushing into him as he fiddles with his lute in the small space, Geralt can see the collar of his doublet with fine gold stitching along the edge that must have cost at least ten full dinners if not more. The doublet that Jaskier had complained about being soiled during a back-alley fight with a few mercenaries a fortnight ago when a seam had been ripped is the same as the one he is now stowing stale bread in. The bard has enough coin saved up from the last town to afford a meal served on a plate instead of the floor and yet he never gives up the chance to play in an inn, no matter the crowd’s reaction. 

“Why?” Geralt finds himself asking; the question pushing against his mind until it slips out against his better judgement. He shouldn’t care, Jaskier’s habits, as long as they’re not getting him killed or annoying him personally, are just another facet of him that Geralt doesn’t understand, like the running commentary on their adventures or his insistence on helping with baths. Just another part of Jaskier that he’d forgotten to question somewhere along the way and now it’s merely another shade of color in his many and varied clothes. That doesn’t stop him from being curious, however. 

“Why do you have an allergy to smiling? I don’t know, Geralt, you tell me.” Jaskier waves his bread to accentuate his point, flakes of it raining onto the table like dandruff. 

Instead of replying, Geralt finishes off his pint and returns a patron’s glare with a blank stare until the apparent butcher turns back to his dinner sans bread. 

The third time he brings it up, he doesn’t have to ask Jaskier the question. It’s almost half a year later, a time after they’d separated for their own purposes, and his only concern is collecting the coin he was promised after clawing his way through a burrow of rotfiends. The venom he’d ended up coated with drips onto the street with every step and it must have clogged his ears too, because that’s the only explanation for why he hears Jaskier’s voice from the dark gap between two shops. 

“I’ve got more! You can take it all.” 

His first instinct is to unsheathe his sword again, ignore the ache in his bones and wade into whatever puddle of trouble Jaskier had fallen into. But the words don’t sound like the bard’s being mugged, not fearful or worried, quiet though they are. 

Stopping by the entrance to the small alley, he wipes a hand over his splattered face and peers in to see Jaskier crouched by a gaggle of urchins pulling hunk after handful of bread from his sleeves and pockets to accompanying laughter. None of the children look older than ten, one of them trails a grubby dwarvish doll from a three-fingered hand while another sits in the mud to chew the scraps he’d gotten with teeth sharp enough to gnaw bone in half. 

“That might be all,” he admits after another minute or so, before sweeping the feathered hat he only wore during the gaudier festivals off his head to show its contents. “Ah, I’d almost forgotten about these! They had a fresh harvest last night, just on hand I guess, and I caught a few besides.” 

The hat is quickly emptied and the children scatter, one scooting by Geralt with her ears hidden under a torn kerchief pulled low, until the alley is empty save Jaskier standing up to dust his hat and pat down his much emptier jacket. Geralt meets his eyes as he turns to leave and the smile that crosses his face is fast, deceptively fast. 

“Geralt! That rotfiend must have been a wimpy one for you to finish so quickly! I wasn’t expecting you back until nightfall, would have made for a dramatic return, but no matter, I can tweak that in later. Besides, hard to recognize you anyway, looking like a pustule come walking like that.”

“There’s lettuce in your hair,” Geralt notes, pulling the stray greenery out with his offal-sticky fingers as Jaskier ducks his head to brush away any more telltale signs.

“Oh that, that’s nothing. I had a face full of tomato last night, some villagers had a bumper crop, I guess. Had those on hand when they were trying to take Roach from the stables, but she wasn’t having it so I tried to shoo them off and got a few vegetables from my trouble...” Catching sight of Geralt’s expression, Jaskier trails off with his arms still gesturing madly with hat in hand. “What?” 

“Your actions speak louder than your words, bard.” The odd feeling that’s warming him doesn’t bother Geralt at the moment and Jaskier’s grin is infectious enough to make his foot slip in the pool of slime that had collected on the cobbles. 

“Aren’t you the one who was asking about respect back then? My songs are for you.” Jaskier shrugs, patting Geralt’s shoulder. “But I do with my bread what I want. Including storing it in my pants.” 

“Hm.” He rakes his gaze down Jaskier’s clothes, the embroidery fuzzing up at his wrists and the slight pouch shape still retained by his shirt at the waist. “You could use some bigger clothes.” 

“Are you offering me your own then?” Jaskier dances into motion when Geralt strides off at the comment, ending up skipping backward up the street to keep up with his faster pace. “I couldn’t refuse such a generous gift, but I do imagine there’s bits of kikimora caked into every inch—”

“No.” His destination can’t come fast enough. Pushing the door to the inn open, Jaskier follows in his wake like a bee that won’t stop buzzing until its duty is done. He spares a look at the villagers waiting at the bar, deciding his current state will do nicely in securing the coin they’d promised and strides across the room to slam his sword down on the counter. 

“It’s all right here!” The first man’s fingers fumble with the pouch as he pulls it from his pocket. “Are they all dealt with?” 

“Depends on how my horse feels about revisiting the site to check for any stragglers.” 

“Yes, I see. Well,” he adds a few extra pieces of silver in with the rest, a nervous smile nailed onto the man’s face, “A fine mare she is, to carry such a man.” 

Looping the drawstring around the pommel of his sword, he makes for the stairs, ignoring the way Jaskier’s glare disappeared as soon as he’d turned around. Just as he makes a point to forget the handful of silver he slips into the pocket of Jaskier’s pants when he steals Geralt’s bath after he’s done.


	2. Chapter 2

Jaskier notices that Geralt lets things come to him, rather than the other way around. 

They’re waiting for the blacksmith to be done fitting Roach out, an important errand that Geralt never delays with, and while Geralt contents himself with taking up a post near the barn door, Jaskier has found a seat on the fence with his lyric notes out while he indulges the quiet pastoral sensibilities of the scenery around them. The mountain looms up behind the village but from their spot near the edge and a little ways up the slope, it’s a beautiful view of the rolling foothills and the streams crossing like veins over the wrinkled earth. 

He’s a few minutes into the task of finding even more rhymes for ‘yearning’ when he looks up to find Geralt three feet away from a cat that looks only a little bigger than a loaf. The witcher is crouched, hunched near the ground with his yellow eyes fixed on two very like his own and he simply waits. No calls, no murmurs to come closer, just a stillness settling over him as though he could scare the cat away with a mere breath. Jaskier thinks of that stillness, remembers seeing it more often than he’d have expected, when children passed by or became curious, when the barmaids bring him drinks and when the old, bent farmers he trades for a few carrots take Geralt's sparse coin. 

His witcher can’t make himself smaller, can’t remove the expectations from the minds of those who encounter him and so he goes still, keeping himself motionless as they approach. As though afraid of chasing them who would perform a kindness or a curiosity away. Jaskier’s charcoal has left a smear of grey across the edge of his thumbs as he rubbed the stick between his fingers in thought and he snaps from his reverie at the soft mewl of a feline. 

The colorful calico is bending against Geralt’s leg, claws sunk into the leather of his armor and brushing her head along his clenched fist which slowly uncurls until she presses her nose against the calloused fingers and climbs into his lap. 

“The White Wolf and the little cat, a little too fable-sounding to me but you know, I can make anything work,” Jaskier calls over, pitching his voice low to keep from ruining Geralt’s work but he needn’t have bothered. The cat is firmly planted across Geralt’s thighs, who shoots Jaskier an unimpressed look before returning to his slow carding of fingers through her soft fur. 

“Stooping to nursery rhymes, bard?” Geralt grumbles back, far milder than his usual tone at which Jaskier comes close to toppling from his perch. He might even have said it came close to being a coo, as rough as there ever was, but the gravel in Geralt’s voice is ground smooth as he continues. “You’ll be queening soon.” 

Sidestepping his surprise at Geralt’s clear address to the cat, Jaskier stares at him quizzically. The cat doesn’t look rounded or heavier than expected in the least, though admittedly he isn’t petting her to the point of purring right then as Geralt appears to be doing. 

He’s watching the cat baring her chin for the witcher’s careful strokes when the blacksmith brings Roach out of his barn, her short knicker pulling Geralt’s attention away even as he seems reluctant to stand up now that his lap is burdened as it is. 

“She’s looking good,” Jaskier remarks, jumping down from his spot and taking the reigns from the blacksmith, whose expression is fixed into a stunned kind of shock as Geralt finally gets up with the cat twining around his ankles. 

“Payment as promised,” Geralt mutters, proffering the handful of coins and this time Jaskier knows what’s coming. The stillness that comes over him, waiting for the blacksmith to approach and take what is due without a waver in his stance. 

The observation sticks with him, flitting around in his mind for the rest of their day’s journey and even as they make camp. His lyrics are forgotten in the meantime, he’s got enough ‘burning’ and ‘discerning’ to do of his own. As to _why_ his witcher does this, _why_ he’d never noticed it before and how it fits into his picture of Geralt. Because he knows that jobs turn into rescues more often than not, that Geralt has his fair share of bad memories in relation to humans from the past, that Jaskier is still trying to undo all the associations the common folk have but perhaps… perhaps he’d missed how that affected Geralt himself. 

Behind the black of his garb and the gold in his eyes, he’s always wanted for the simplest things. A little peace, some quiet, a _nap_. He’d never seemed to care for people’s opinions, as dry as his own were when Jaskier got the opportunity to hear them, so what is it that brings him to that stillness? 

He’s still mulling on it when Geralt jabs the skewer of fish he’d caught under Jaskier’s nose.

“It’ll burn if you leave it any longer. Last I heard, you don’t like the taste of ash,” is his only comment, returning to his stony contemplation as he spears his own empty skewer into the smoldering remnants.

“What do I have a taste for, then?” Jaskier bites into his dinner, the edges still hot and he sucks in a quick breath as a last-ditch attempt to cool it off. The mild pain is enough to make him jerk the fish away, the sharp point waving wildly before Geralt catches his hand to keep it still.

“Your own burned tongue.” 

Jaskier glares at him, but the smile at the corner of Geralt’s mouth makes him forget the tingling in his own. They’re sitting on the same side of the fire, mostly to keep the smoke out of their eyes from the slight breeze rustling through the forest but Jaskier finds himself thinking of rough hands gently untangling the cat’s paws from his pants and where those fingers rest now, curling in a warm grip over his knuckles with just enough pressure to hold his hand steady. 

As soon as Jaskier’s mouth parts, still watching the hint of a smile, he notices it again. Geralt goes _still_. Like a lake undisturbed by even the ripple of a fish’s passing, he stays and Jaskier realizes he could pull away easily. Could disentangle their fingers with less effort than it takes to strum a chord, and yet he knows what Geralt’s doing now. 

His idle gaze becomes a lure, pulling him towards Geralt now that he _understands_ . They’re a mere inch apart when he begins to doubt, to think the heat in those eyes might be for a different reason, that there’ll be no response bar another burned tongue, except in a different sense, when Geralt’s stillness breaks and he moves just a fraction. _Towards_ Jaskier. 

And Jaskier meets him, lips brushing against parted lips, in a gesture so fragile he wonders if it’ll break upon exhale but Geralt presses into another kiss, more bold now that Jaskier’s touched him first, and it blooms between them. 

Between the gentle tilting of his world, Jaskier’s thoughts slip away despite his confirmed theory. That with all the fear curdling his interactions with the world, Geralt had found kindness only rested near him when he ignored it, lest it flee at his smallest motion to welcome it. Jaskier’s heart, already turning to Geralt as a sunflower to its light, had taken root around him as Geralt had waited and would remain with him wherever he went.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm open to prompts on [my tumblr](https://squidpro-quo.tumblr.com/), or just let me know what you thought!


End file.
